![]() ![]() If you look carefully, you should see that at the point where silence is reached, the silence still isn’t as strong as it could be – the green line hasn’t reached its maximum. The next bit isn’t, and I’m going to put our two graphs on top of each other to explain why: I think so far, everything I have said is quite intuitive. Noise begets noise and if that line goes too far, you end up having to deal with active and deliberate disruption. Take our foot off the pedal, and we lose everything.Īnother important issue with that line flicking up is that the line always starts as students just making a bit of noise, then it turns into them having a quiet chat with a neighbour, then a student three seats away, and ends up eventually in outright poor behaviour. So we have to continually fight to bring that noise level down, and our gains are hard won and transient. And if you stop doing your strategies, that line will bounce straight back up: While that line is increasing and the silence is strengthening, it is liable to break. We see that silence’s strength increases with time. Things which don’t break easily are strong, so let’s do another graph that maps the strength of the silence against time: It has a fragility to it, a measure of how easy it is to break. Silence has a character, a flavour almost, and it isn’t this thing which once it’s there, it’s there forever. To get that silence, you do techniques like the ones we mentioned above: We’re going to start answering this question by drawing a graph of noise against time:Īs you can see from the graph, things start noisy, then quiet down with time, and then reach a point of silence. Why does this happen? Why do students go from silent to a bit noisy to a lot noisy so quickly? Students are talking to each other and you have to raise your voice or do a countdown to get them back quiet again. But then a student tells you they’ve forgotten their book, you tell them to stay at the end of the lesson, and before you know it, noise has bubbled up. Ok, so you’ve done all that, you’ve got them in and you’ve got them quiet. If these words and techniques don’t make sense to you, please see here. Pastore’s Perch (once students are in the room, you move to a spot where you can keep the majority of students in your field of vision – normally the front corner).Be Seen Looking (crane your head both in and out of the room, so students can see you are watching them).Narrate the positive ( well done, David – you’ve got started first! Who will be second…).Strong Threshold (stand in the doorway and greet them as they come in).You want them to settle quickly and get started on the work in silence. Students are coming into the room, and there is a starter on the board. Let’s take your lesson start as our prime example. It’s also a blog for those teachers – again like me – who sometimes struggle to maintain that silence. ![]() This is a blog for those teachers – like me – who like students to work quietly at various points. Some people don’t like periods of silence in their lessons, and that’s fine. No sooner have students sunk into silence than the noise starts to bubble up again, and before you know it the spell is broken and your classroom is silent no longer. It’s not so easy to achieve though, and it sometimes feels fickle and elusive, slipping out of your grasp as soon as it has descended. Participation Ratio is high, and you can almost feel the learning in the room. Students are focused, heads are down, pens are busily scratching away. There’s something magical about a silent classroom.
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